Tom's already offered you a rundown of this year's Actual New Games - the ones that are offering, in their own ways, something unique - and now here's the slightly less glamorous look at the other side of the coin.
They're big business, these blockbuster sequels, and for all that we lament the lack of innovation it's these big-budget series that inevitably garner the most attention and inspire the most devotion from the majority. That's nothing to be scorned - iteration's an important thing in games development and indeed the development of games - and a composite of evolved features designed to fulfil a particular desire, be that the needs of a sports fan or those wanting a fresh shooter fix, can be just as important to the progression of the medium as the advent of a new game mechanic or control concept.
Sequels take many forms and capture our attention for many reasons. Some build their features up year by year, like FIFA and Call of Duty, and will continue to be brilliant when we encounter them later in 2012. Others build on the storytelling or world-building of games a few years past, like Gearbox's brilliant-looking Borderlands 2 or the sure-to-be-spectacular finale to the Shepard's tale in Mass Effect 3. And some are interesting because of their circumstances - Halo 4, for example, is another big-budget sequel on the near horizon, and with a new and as-yet unproven developer filling Bungie's big boots, we're just interested in that out of morbid curiosity as devotion to the series.
There are many reasons to be fascinated by a great many of them. They're not exactly Actual New Games, but they're follow-ups with bite - be they revisionist in their approach or, in the case of Blizzard's bumper year of releases, just too significant and well-made not to get excited about. So here are a handful of 2012's interesting sequels, a small selection of the blockbusters that are getting us tingling with excitement about the 12 months ahead.
That digit at the end of the title tells us more about what's likely to be 2012's biggest game than even last year's trailer did. Last generation, GTA3's follow-ups weren't ever afforded full sequel status, and while the Episodes From Liberty City release that came in GTA4's wake suggested a change of tack from Rockstar, that bigger number is enough to suggest this year's game will be doing more than moving to a bigger canvas.
But for now that bigger canvas is all we've got to go on. Los Santos promises a larger play area, as well as a perfect backdrop to Rockstar's familiar brand of satire. And, whether you love or loathe the humour, you've got to give credit to a contemporary big-budget game taking on contemporary global issues.
Beyond that, it's currently anyone's guess. There have been suggestions of an episodic, multi-character approach to the main story, while it'll be interesting to see how and if Rockstar will try to loosen Call of Duty's grip on online gaming. All those answers are yet to come, but for now here's hoping that GTA comes back with the style, imagination and daring that helped make the series' name in the first place.
For many Dota's a strange and elitist beast that's alien to all but its devoted fanbase (perhaps not helped by the fact everyone's stopped explaining it used to mean "Defence of the Ancients"), but this year there's added interest, as it's about to become the battleground for two of PC gaming's heavyweights.
As sequels go, Valve's take on the Dota formula hardly tears up the rulebook - at least, that seems to be the case from early impressions of the beta - and it's a rulebook that's as thick and impenetrable as Joyce's Ulysses, ensuring that this particular Dota is going to keep the faithful happy even if it's doing little to endear itself to newcomers.
Blizzard, on the other hand, claims to be opening up its own take on the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena genre (MOBA) that it helped spawn with a free-to-play add-on for StarCraft 2. Perhaps inspired by the all-inclusive and incredibly successful League of Legends, it's shooting for the kind of accessibility that's become an artform in the developer's hands. If it can open up this once-elusive genre to the masses in the same way that it helped popularise the MMO, then it could be onto a winner.
Changing lanes: Paul Dean had a good hard look at what all this Dota stuff actually means. A good starting point for those new to the genre.
Have you heard the one about the developer of Legendary: The Box and the once-beloved survival-horror series of a Japanese publisher? 12 months ago it would have been easy to dismiss rumours of Spark Unlimited working on Resident Evil 6, but while it still seems outlandish, in light of what's happened at Capcom recently the rumours have been lent a chilling plausibility.
Slant Six has taken charge of the curious-looking Resident Evil spin-off Raccoon City, while Ninja Theory has been given the keys to one of Capcom's more wayward series, Devil May Cry. It's a decision that didn't receive the warmest of welcomes, with the shallow combat that's typified the Cambridge developers' recent games an ominous sign of a reboot heading in the wrong direction in some people's eyes.
But prejudices have slowly washed away in recent months, and while it's unlikely that Devil May Cry will be competing with Bayonetta in the complexity stakes its combat is looking to offer far more than many expected - or feared, to be more precise. On the other side of the coin, DMC looks to be in safe hands, with the storytelling talent behind the highly-praised Enslaved now able to sink its teeth into a universe that, for all of its absurdity, has always maintained a brilliantly aloof sense of cool.
Diablo 3's rat-run of click and loot is formulaic, but no-one's formula is more polished than Blizzard's, and it's the result of years of painstaking refinement. The end result, as anyone who's been lucky enough to sample the beta will confess, is horrendously compelling - a slick thread of exploration and ever-escalating numbers, told against the backdrop of a richly dark universe.
It's a perfect lattice of mechanics, then, and on top of that Blizzard's found some space for innovation and more than a little artistry - as well as a little controversy to boot. The auction house and Diablo 3's demand for an online connection have put many off, which is a shame, because for all these foibles this looks like an expert slice of adventuring, and threatens to consume more hours than any other game releasing in 2012.
Dungeon keeper: Oli flew out to Orange County to get an early look at the beta, and to offer a look into the work behind this monumental sequel.
Planetside 2 is, by the developer's own admission, a retread of the first game, taking place on the same continent and with the same factions and with many of the same mechanics intact. But since the first game launched in 2003 there's been nothing quite like it (or at least nothing on the same scale), and to see Sony Online Entertainment have another crack at this ambitious concept with contemporary tech at its disposal is enough to get us interested.
Crystal Dynamics has made some of the best Tomb Raiders of the lot, but it's never really created its own Tomb Raider, its trio of games sticking close to Core Design's now dog-eared script.
So this year's Tomb Raider is particularly exciting, offering up a reboot that promises a thrilling deconstruction of the Lara story. The comic-book Croft of old is now younger, more delicate and fronting a game that's as much about survival as it is gung-ho adventure.
For series' fans there's no need for alarm - with the brilliant downloadable Lara spin-off Guardians of Light, the developer proved that it could maintain the essence of the series even with a shift in scope and perspective, and that's likely to be the case here too. Beneath the grime, the pull of this Tomb Raider will likely be the same as it ever has - only now it's been reimagined, and reinvigorated.
Croft original: We went to go and see this prior to last year's E3, and came out waving around this Tomb Raider Preview.
The blend of gunplay and supernatural powers suggest that mechanically this is BioShock 3 in all but name, which would likely be enough to warrant a mention on this list anyway, but what excites us most about BioShock Infinite is Irrational's energetic reinvention of the world that houses this story-driven first-person shooter.
The destroyed utopia of Rapture has been left behind, the action moving skywards to Columbia. Seeing the murky purples and greens of the first two games swapped out for dazzling cream stonework and golden furnishings under a bright blue sky makes for an arresting change, as does the introduction of AI partner Elizabeth. BioShock, for all of its brilliance, told its story at arm's length through a series of detached voices, but now Irrational is shooting for some human engagement. If it pulls that off it will be a rare feat indeed.
Columbian gold: Tom spoke with Ken Levine - officially the hunkiest man in video games - last year to get a grip on BioShock Infinite.
It's from Platinum Games. That should say it all, really - in its brief life, the Osaka studio that emerged from the ashes of Clover has produced some astonishing games, and even its duff titles have been at the very least intriguing - but of course there's much more to tell.
It's a Metal Gear game seemingly without the one thing that has defined the series: stealth. That said, it's arguably a sense of absurd and overblown spectacle that's defined more recent entries than sneaking, and in that regard Platinum makes the perfect partner.
Revengeance is, from the title onwards, a ludicrous exercise, its action a hyperkinetic flurry of sword-swipes cut together with knowing winks to the camera from its cybernetically enhanced cast. It's combo-heavy and balletic action, with a faint whiff of Bayonetta about it. That - along with the idea of a Metal Gear game told from a fresh angle - is reason enough to make this one of the more fascinating games coming out of Japan this year.
This wouldn't be the first time we've waxed a little lyrical about Guild Wars 2, and it impressed us enough at last year's Eurogamer Expo to walk confidently away with our Game of the Show award.
Designed from the ground up to bring people together in the cataclysmic battles of the world, the game also dispenses with the Holy Trinity group mechanic that too often leaves players twiddling their thumbs waiting for the action to start. Persistent server-on-server battles that rage for up to a week at a time should also bring some much needed purpose to the battleground grind that currently dominates the genre.
Here are some of the sequels that, while maybe not getting us all tingly, at least gave us some kind of stirring.
Starcraft 2: Heart of the Swarm: It's a Blizzard production, which pretty much guarantees excellence (when they decide otherwise they usually cancel the project outright), but it's also an interesting departure from Wings of Liberty, with a focus on the Zerg promising a more chaotic and destructive brand of real-time strategy.
Prey 2: So much has changed from the original in Human Head's sequel that you wonder why they kept the Prey name at all. With a different environment and a different lead, what it shares with the original is a creative approach to the first-person shooter, while bringing athletic gunplay and an immersive world to the table.
Neverwinter: A free-to-play MMORPG, Neverwinter's allure comes from the potential of developer Cryptic getting its teeth into the Dungeons & Dragon's universe. It faces stiff competition from the likes of D&D Online, but hopefully it can roll a good fight.
"Have they pulled it off?" That was the question spitting incredulously from our lips back in 2001 when Grand Theft Auto made its leap from top-down 2D distraction to fully 3D, open-world game-changer. In a moment of cultural symmetry that probably means something or other, "have they pulled it off?" is also the question that greets GTA3 in 2011, as it celebrates its 10th birthday by debuting on mobile platforms that don't even have buttons.
It's a blue-plaque moment as far as technological change is concerned, and even though games like Infinity Blade should have convinced us that these pocket-sized devices can offer more than Snake and Minefield, the arrival of Grand Theft Auto on the iPhone is momentous enough to warrant a contemplative pause.
Given the ubiquity of so many of its ideas, it's easy to forget just what a paradigm shift Rockstar's opus represented. There had been open-world games before, of course, and Driver had already offered free-roaming car chase thrills only a few years earlier. What GTA did, in its leap to three fully fleshed-out dimensions, was expand the canvas. It wasn't just the freedom of movement, but the sense of place. The radio stations. The characters. The sly sense of humour. To be told we were at liberty to go nuts in Liberty City was a pivotal moment in the evolution of game design.
That's a lot of history, not to mention a lot of game, to cram into a platform smaller than the Dual Shock joypads used to play the original. So, have they pulled it off? Amazingly, the answer is yes. And no.
The good news is that Liberty City has made the transition intact. This isn't some cut-down rehash bearing the same title but offering limited pleasures. This is the full game, exactly as it was 10 years ago, faithfully carried across an ocean measured in years and evolving hardware.
Held in the palm of your hand, it's a fairly remarkable sight with one foot undeniably in the past - the angular faces, a frame rate that wobbles when things get busy, the buildings that pop into life in front of you - and the other in the future, as you realise that a game which once set the benchmark for cutting-edge games technology is now on your phone.
Even the audio, usually the first thing to be hacked away by developers keeping an eye on file sizes, has been retained. Every radio station, every skit, every politically incorrect cut-scene: it's all here and as fun as it ever was.
When even the most basic iPhone can pack several times more data than a DVD into its slender chassis, it was never really a question of how much of the game would survive the transition, but how it would play on a touch screen. Here, sadly, the good news dries up.
To be fair, GTA's mobile incarnation goes out of its way to offer a variety of control methods, but none are particularly successful. There's just no getting away from the fact that this is a game that was designed around controllers with multiple buttons, each of which was capable of being used for different commands in different contexts. The iPhone has a small screen, and that's it. As a result, crunching all the controls required into such a small space results in a distracting cascade of semi-transparent buttons down the side of the screen.
Driving fares marginally better than on-foot exploration, as it only requires an accelerator, brake, left and right steering and a button for getting in and out of vehicles. Shooting while driving is a fiddle too far, but it wasn't particularly well implemented in the original game either. You can opt to use free-form finger swipes for steering, as well as the accelerometer, rather than static left and right buttons, but this proves to be more fussy than workable. Finger swipes also move the camera left and right, while pressing the centre of the screen gives you a look behind. Of course, doing this means taking your fingers off the other controls, usually leading to a horrible crash.
It's while romping around on foot that the controls really struggle. Holding down a "walk" button means that wherever your other thumb lands becomes a virtual joystick. This flexibility is a nice touch but it can't compensate for what is, at best, a very flaky way of navigating a complex 3D world. Shooting is perhaps the only area to be significantly changed by the hardware - you now just tap the attack button while the game decides who to auto-target. It's clumsy and, more often than not, woefully ineffective.
As if sensing that there's no single right answer to solving the open-world control problem, the options menu offers commendable freedom to assign the controls in a way that feels natural. Icons can be resized and relocated, everything can be flipped for left-handed players, and there's a selection of different input methods to try. Even then, with so many functions to cram into such limited space, it's too easy to misplace fingers, hit the wrong hotspots and generally lose track of what goes where.
Rockstar has revealed why Grand Theft Auto 3 had a silent protagonist - ten years after the ground-breaking open world gangster game launched.
GTA 3's infamous protagonist, Claude, kept his mouth shut throughout the entire game. Rockstar said this was mostly because it had other things to worry about during development, and "this did not seem like a major issue".
"It may now seem obvious that people should all talk in games, but this was not necessarily the case in 2001, certainly not in an open world game," wrote the studio on Rockstar Newswire.
"We were making up a lot of procedures as we went along, and we decided that the NPCs (Non Playable Characters) should talk and we would have to figure out how to make them talk (using motion captured cutscenes, something that had never really been done before, at least not on the scale we were doing it).
"So we decided that the game's protagonist would not talk, partly to aid people identifying with him, but mostly because we had so many other problems to solve and this did not seem like a major issue."
Rockstar introduced a talking lead character for Grand Theft Auto Vice City, its 2002 follow-up. In that game you play Tommy Vercetti (voiced by Ray Liotta), a member of the Liberty City mafia.
"We started to discuss introducing a talking lead character when working on Vice City, but it was a lot of work," Rockstar said.
"While the structure of GTA3 may seem obvious or natural now, and the use of cutscenes made in the game's engine that look and feel like the game may seem simple and easy, it really was not the case back in 2001 when we had to figure out all of these things for the first time.
"Oh and in San Andreas, CJ calls Claude a mute because he does not talk and CJ finds this unnerving."
This week Rockstar launched Grand Theft Auto 3: 10 Year Anniversary Edition for iOS and Android devices. Grand Theft Auto 5 is expected to launch next year.
Grand Theft Auto 3: 10th Anniversary Edition arrives on the App Store and Android Marketplace on 15th December, Rockstar Games has announced.
Priced at your local equivalent of $4.99, it's the same game you played back in 2001, updated with touch screen controls. See the screens below for a better idea of how it looks.
As detailed on Rockstar's official site, it's compatible with the following devices:
"Grand Theft Auto III showed us the potential of open world games," commented Rockstar founder Sam Houser back in October.
"It helped set the vision for the company, and we have been expanding on those possibilities with every game ever since."
Eurogamer's Tom Bramwell awarded the open world crime epic a perfect 10/10 upon its original launch.
"GTA3 is a luscious, sprawling epic of a game and one of the most complete experiences I have ever encountered," read his Grand Theft Auto 3 review.
Grand Theft Auto developer Rockstar has revealed how the September 11 attacks changed GTA3, which launched just weeks after the terrorist atrocities.
Alterations were made to distance the game's fictionalised Liberty City setting from New York City, and a mission that mentioned terrorists was also trimmed.
"As far as I recall, we changed the colour of the cop cars so they weren't identical to NYPD, we altered the flight path of a plane so that it didn't look like it was flying into or behind a skyscraper, and we removed one mission as it made a reference to terrorists," Rockstar exec Dan Houser told Edge (via CVG).
A few lines of pedestrian dialogue and talk radio were also cut, while the US game box cover was redesigned.
The alterations were less dramatic than initial rumours suggested, Houser explained. "That's a little bit of a misconception [that changes were significant]," he said. "Some people believe we removed an entire strand of missions because they found some reference in the code to a character called Darkel, but he had been cut months before [release] and the missions were never completed."
Due to be launched on 3rd October 2001, GTA3 was pushed back three weeks while Rockstar combed through the game's code.
"Most of the delay in releasing the game, which was only a couple of weeks, was a product of the fact that our office in New York was pretty close to Ground Zero and so any work that had to be done there was made impossible for a period," Houser added.
"The mood in the office... It was very upsetting, very unnerving and overwhelming. It was the same for us as it was for anybody. But we also felt we'd come this close to making this great game and that despite these problems, just as despite the problems of Take Two, it was our duty to finish it."
Rockstar is porting 2001 mega-hit Grand Theft Auto 3 to mobile devices.
The launch is part of the 10th anniversary of the groundbreaking sandbox action game, set for 22nd October 2011.
Grand Theft Auto 3 is down for "select new generation iOS and Android devices" this autumn.
The list of supported devices in full:
"Grand Theft Auto III showed us the potential of open world games," said Rockstar founder Sam Houser.
"It helped set the vision for the company, and we have been expanding on those possibilities with every game ever since."
Tom Bramwell reviewed Grand Theft Auto 3, awarding it a stonking 10/10.
"GTA3 is a luscious, sprawling epic of a game and one of the most complete experiences I have ever encountered," he said. "If this is what I've waited a year to see on my PlayStation 2, then I would have waited ten. Magnificent."
As part of the anniversary, Rockstar has relaunched the Rockstar Warehouse, where special anniversary edition items will be available for purchase throughout October.
Included is a limited edition 1:6 scale action figure of Grand Theft Auto III lead character Claude. He has a bat, knife, grenades, pistol, sniper rifle and assault rifle. It goes on sale on 20th October.
Sony will discount more than 100 PSP games over the next month on the PSN Store.
While there's no new content to be had, the EU PlayStation blog lists over 50 PSP games and minis discounted "to show you that PSP is still alive".
The current deals last until 7th September, when another list of PSP classics get a price drop.
The first part of Sony's PSP Power Sale includes GTA China Town Wars, Ghost Recon: Predator and Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines halved in cost.
The full listing lies below:
PSOne
PSP
minis
Video: GTA Chinatown Wars on PSP.
Exclusive games and downloadable content are "critical" for the Xbox 360, Microsoft has said.
Exclusive content - even if it's only for a set period of time - is crucial for differentiating the Xbox 360 from the PlayStation 3 and Wii, Microsoft's European boss Chris Lewis told Eurogamer.
"They are important," he said. "DLC windows of exclusivity are critical for us for differentiation. We'll continue to bring those exclusives through our own studio work, Gears and Forza and other titles."
Microsoft has throughout the Xbox 360's six years of life been active in sourcing exclusive games and DLC from third parties.
The exclusivity window of Grand Theft Auto IV expansions and Call of Duty map packs in particular have helped Microsoft generate more money from Xbox Live transactions than subscriptions.
In addition, Microsoft actively works with publishers to try to make multi-platform games better on Xbox 360, Lewis said.
"We're also pretty confident the cross-platform experience is better on Xbox. We enjoy great success with Call of Duty. Live is the oxygen that runs through our business. The experience users have through Xbox Live is a fundamental differentiator for us versus other platforms. FIFA is another one. Certainly here in Europe football is a religion. Our ongoing commitment to experiencing better and playing better on Xbox is partly a function of what we do with Xbox Live.
"So, exclusive IP is critical, of course. You'll see more of that over time. You'll also see us, though, committed to working with people like EA and Activision on their cross-platform consoles to make sure they play better, and they integrate better across PC, phone and the console in a way other people's just simply can't."
Lewis said Microsoft uses the Xbox 360's 55 million installed base and the Xbox Live experience to convince publishers to get on board.
"We have good, healthy partnerships with all the publishers around the globe, now," Lewis said. "Over the last 10 years those have developed and they like the momentum we have. It's hard to trivialise 55 million units out there. Everyone loves the install base. We did grow 20 per cent last year in Europe. We want to grow even more this coming year. If you think where we are in the life cycle that's a fairly unusual ambition at this time.
"Our publishers, they see that, they see that ambition, they know how much money we're going to spend. They know the depth of the partnerships. They love the technology. And they understand we want to differentiate ourselves through DLC or the beauty of the integration across the different device types that we have and are uniquely placed to be able to offer versus our very good quality competition.
The link between violent video games such as Grand Theft Auto and the riots that have gripped the UK this week are entirely predictable and part of a cycle of moral panic, according to experts.
On Monday, following a weekend of unrest in the capital, the London Evening Standard's front page linked Rockstar's open world crime epic to the real world violence.
"Go home, get a takeaway and watch anything that happens on TV," one constable advised the paper. "These are bad people who did this. Kids out of control. When I was young it was all Pac-Man and board games. Now they're playing Grand Theft Auto and want to live it for themselves."
The paper changed its story for the West End final edition, but not before it was roundly criticised by specialist press and gamers.
According to Christopher Ferguson, an associate professor at Texas A&M International University who has researched the link between violent video games and violent behaviour, this kind of reaction does not come as a surprise.
"According to Moral Panic Theory, this in fact is rather expected," he told Eurogamer last night. "Many moral panics focus on crime particularly among youth, and typically the broader society searches for 'boogeymen' who can be blamed for real or imagined (most often imagined) violent 'epidemics' among youth.
"Western society has a long tradition of media-based moral panics from the Greeks to the present day. Everything from Greek plays to dime novels, comic books, Elvis Presley, Dungeons and Dragons, Harry Potter and video games (I suspect social media may be the next boogeyman in line).
"It's a fairly predictable cycle, yet we keep repeating it. The UK would do better to examine their economic and social policies (as would the US) rather than wasting time focusing on video games."
There is no evidence to suggest a link between video game violence and real world violence a point made to Eurogamer by a number of experts on the matter last night.
While some studies indicate a link between aggressive personality and gameplay, the causal direction is not clear. And while studies do indicate that individuals pre-disposed to aggression are more likely to find the violent contents of games motivating, there is no scientific evidence that supports the claim that playing violent video games, for example, playing GTA, is linked to violent behaviour in the real world.
Indeed violent crime has plummeted in the UK and other countries as sales of video games have risen. And some research indicates that video game play may have a cathartic effect, that is, they relieve frustration and aggression.
"If you plot the sales of violent realistic games over time, and the number of events of youth violence, the correlation is negative," Dr Andy Przybylski, research fellow at the University of Essex, said. "On a societal scale, levels of youth violence have been negatively related to increased video game play."
"It's probably time to retire this belief as the data just never was there," Ferguson continued.
"Obviously rioting occurred long before there were video games. Most often these situations, rioting, is due to a disconnect between a group of (primarily) young men and the society they feel has failed to provide them with adequate avenues for advancement. Trying to shift blame onto video games seems like a distraction from the more pressing societal issues that may be behind these riots."
"They are a new form of entertainment that many are not familiar with," Przybylski concluded. "Although the median age of a gamer is 34 years old, many people haven't finished GTA IV - and learned what happens to people who murder."
Rockstar is yet to comment on the story.
Take-Two will announce new games scheduled for release during its next financial year in the "coming months", the company has said.
Last night Take-Two reported its Q1 FY2012 results, and boss Strauss Zelnick said the US publisher has some unannounced titles for release during the next fiscal year that gamers will hear about in the "coming months" comments that have sparked speculation that Rockstar may soon announce Grand Theft Auto 5.
During a question and answer session Zelnick was asked by an analyst how the company will reach profitability without a Grand Theft Auto release in fiscal year 2013 (April 2012 to March 2013).
Zelnick batted the question away, pointing to Irrational's BioShock Infinite and Gearbox's Borderlands 2.
As GTANet.com notes, the last time Take-Two achieved the $2 per share net income it hopes to make during its next financial year, it launched Grand Theft Auto IV.
"Looking ahead to fiscal year 2013, we have already announced three exciting new releases: BioShock Infinite, Spec Ops: The Line, and Borderlands 2, and we have a very strong pipeline of yet-to-be announced titles in development," Zelnick concluded.